Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day Two of Two: The Support

“We need the past to be brighter than the invisible darkness of future. We need a history of heroes to let us know that bravery is possible. A Greatest Generation and a century of inventors and soldiers and firemen leave us with the belief that many humans have the potential for action, not merely one president or general or saint. We need a canon of many saints who slump towards us. The photo of the many men raising the flag on Iwojima, the tales of many men running into the towers on 9/11, and that the Constitutional Congress was the labor of many minds rather than a gift to a lone Moses - these things tell every man and woman that history beckons widely.

“And we need to feel like we’re failing, because any other feeling will lead us to complacency. For whatever amalgam of reasons, we are the most likely nation to pursue self-improvement. By harkening to the great decisions, of Cronkite weighing against the Vietnam War and Murrow standing up to McCarthy, we invite a generation to seriously look at what present mistakes and evils are going unchallenged. The truth is that history assures we will always have made great decisions, and human nature assures we will always have great decisions we are not making. If history can goad us into living better, then we ought to lose our feet in its tide.

“A hundred years ago we saw Europe at war and could not let the forces of democracy be slaughtered. Today we see blood running in the streets of the Middle East and find ourselves too tired, too weary, too taxed and afraid, and ultimately too confused to answer the simple question of whether we should attempt to stop it.

“You were telling an audience to do more than sit, and for all the current anchors and writers and bloggers to do more than spend twenty-three hours of the day asking whether a single mother eight states away was a good parent. Using the past as a prop to coerce us into thinking we’re failing? We needed that, because we are failing, and if the truth won’t convince us of it, we’ve got to find other means.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day One of Two: The Attack

“When exactly was the United States of America a moral nation? When it interred a million Asians? When it only went to war against the Nazis because it had been bombed? Or perhaps it was in our golden days, when it was slaughtering natives and receiving shipments of blacks to pick cotton. We didn’t go to war for moral reasons. We went to war because we wanted Texas, or didn’t want Spain interfering with our interference in Cuba, and the newspapers were right there toadying. Benjamin Franklin was the first great American op-ed writer and he was such a stooge for the establishment they almost let him write the Constitution.

“This illusion! This illusion you have that the American public was ever informed. There was more than a century when the only reliable way to get a presidential candidate’s platform was if he happened to visit your town. And the Founding Fathers knew people were ignorant and never expected better from them, and so while they enshrined freedom of the press, they also institutionalized the Electoral College for Congress and a Presidency – a private crop of people who would select another private crop of people to decide everything while most of the country tried to survive the flu. Maybe, maybe the second private crop of people decided things for moral reasons, or maybe they fed into a Military Industrial Complex that Lyndon Johnson warned the entire country of live on television and still no one did anything meaningful about.

“So tell me when America knew what it was doing. Was it when we were scalping the natives for government credit? Was it when we were enslaving anyone even descended from an African? Was it when we dropped an atomic bomb on private citizens? When did we qualify as the greatest country in the world, who is the greatest country in the world now, and why on earth would we want to be that thing again?”

Notice: Newsroom Monologues Coming

Tonight is the season finale of HBO's The Newsroom. It's been a provocative show for many people, myself included, and we're going to play with some of what it's provoked. 

On Monday and Tuesday I’m going to run two related and contradictory Bathroom Monologues reflecting based on the series's seminal event. Will McAvoy’s inciting monologue went viral both in his fictional world and in our real one, and it’s stuck with me all season. It’s inspiring to sick-and-tired idealists, while also uniquely troubling with its rosy view of American history. You don’t need a feminist to tell you why the ethos, “we acted like men” is worrisome.

So on Monday we’ll see a monologue attacking Will McAvoy’s rant, and on Tuesday we’ll see a monologue supporting it, though maybe not for the reasons you’d immediately expect. If you like, record an audio or video performance of either monologue and link them in the Comments. It would be fun to do a mega-post of your performed debates.

Bathroom Monologue: Real News

“No news anchor has ever been off television for three years and returned. If you terminate me, you’re right that the three-year non-compete clause will kill my television career. You’re wrong that I won’t be able to hit back, though.

“I get paid enough to have lawyers who have parsed this clause, and there is nothing preventing me from going to Youtube and ripping you apart. More people watch a funny cat video than your leading sitcom. Now, this won’t hit with the internet-illiterate part of our audience, but it will poison the 18-25 demo your advertisers are terrified about. If you think I can’t get an audience, you’ve never seen a famous person go inflammatory online before.

“I can take my claims to the NY Times Op-Ed and The Huffington Post, and my exit will be the top story on every other network, but that’ll be a blip in a promotional tour. The book I write about you will sell more copies for every move you try to make to discredit it, and it will go digital-first, with links and social networks that will draw anyone with a Kindle or iPad to new media. Don’t be surprised if Facebook signs me as their first anchor for their first exclusive on-site programming, where I will get to cover any story I want. If that comes to pass, I sincerely hope that I get to cover your resignation from this network.”

Consumed 8: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Secret of Kells &

The latest episode of Consumed is up today. It's actually not the latest, but a behemoth "lost" episode from several months ago. It manages to transcend time by leading in with Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and discussing particular problems that game has that Dawnguard hasn't fixed. Is it just generic Fantasy? Why are blockbuster games so entrenched in world-building that was trite in prose decades ago? And when does filling out a giant world cause creativity to collapse and eat itself?

Nat Sylva and Max Cantor considerately waded through all these issues, and then into Dark Souls, Skyrim's big competition that's due to leap from console to PC soon. Max has some inspired ranting on why the two franchises are nothing alike, and why he can't stop playing it. Even though this is a lost episode from months ago, Max actually still hasn't stopped.

The most provocative topics came from our discussion of The Secret of Kells, a beautifully animated film with some serious trouble handling race. We debated token roles in media, as well as the popular theme of "HERO THINKS TRADITION IS BAD" and how ambitious such writing rarely gets.


We were also joined by educator Ross Dillon, since he had keys to the apartment and Max hasn't taken any self-defense classes. Ross begged us to discuss Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the show too smart for its own good that 30 Rock trampled to death a few years ago. It had a strong heart, and we discussed how the series had aged since its brief run, and the incredibly gutsy elements the cast managed to get onto network television. The stance on Cocaine V. Drunk Driving is still stunning to me.

You can download the podcast or shout feedback right here.